Ocean Watch
By Susan Scott
Friday, October 19, 2001
Each year, I look forward to writing about Hawaii residents' favorite shorebirds, Pacific golden plovers. Not only do I learn new facts about these birds, the columns generate some of my best mail. Sharing sightings, stories
popular with plover loversThis year, you readers came through again.
In my column of Aug. 31, I wrote that 21 years ago, Montana researcher Oscar Johnson banded a bird with the number 63 at Bellows Beach Park. At that writing, no one knew if the bird had made it from Alaska back to Hawaii for yet another winter season.
Johnson writes: "Good news. Number 63 is alive and well. He still has a few traces of breeding plumage and is back on his usual territory. His minimum age is now at least 21 years, 4 months!"
When discussing this grand old bird, we use the male pronoun because we know this bird is a male. One plover watcher wrote to ask how a person can tell a male from a female.
Spring is the best season to see the differences between the sexes in plovers. At that time, the birds grow new feathers in bright colors and patterns called breeding plumage. This change begins several weeks before the birds leave Hawaii for Alaska, where they mate and raise their young.
As usual among birds, the males get the flashy colors. Male plovers develop a white stripe across the forehead, over the eyes, down the neck, past the breast and along the sides. At the same time, the bird also grows black feathers on its face, underside of neck and breast, making the swoopy white stripe stand out boldly. Outlining the white from above are spangles of gold against a dark gray-brown background.
Female plovers develop these same gold spangles against a dark background over their entire bodies.
In late summer, when the birds first arrive in Hawaii, you often can see remnants of the males' breeding colors. Soon, however, the two sexes become indistinguishable. During the winter both males and females have muted yellow speckles on grayish-brown backgrounds.
Another fact I mentioned in my last plover column is that some people feed their favorite plovers. A reader in Lihue, who enjoys watching her bird, wants to know what kind of food it might like.
In the wild, plovers sometimes eat berries and seeds, but they prefer high-protein food such as insects, earthworms, skinks and geckos. In saltwater marshes and mud flats, plovers eat crabs and snails.
Those foods aren't readily available to most people, so some offer table scraps instead. As a result, some plovers have learned to eat bread, rice, chicken, french fries and apples tossed onto the lawn or pavement. I know one person who fed his plovers hot dogs in tiny pieces and, for a special treat, tossed out slices of Vienna sausages.
Is it OK to feed plovers? I think so because in this case we've already messed with Mother Nature. Nearly all the species plovers eat in Hawaii today are alien to the islands, and manicured lawns aren't exactly natural habitat either. Why not give a helping hand to these adaptable birds?
Last, but not least, in the letter department is a fact sheet I received from a wildlife biologist in Alaska who studies the effects of pesticides on birds. She writes that the lawn pesticides diazinon and chlorpyrifos (Dursban) has killed birds in Alaska, Washington and other Western states.
The message: If you love your plovers, don't use pesticides.
Thanks for taking the time to write me about these remarkable birds. The letters are a highlight of my Hawaii autumns.
Marine science writer Susan Scott's Ocean Watch column
appears weekly in the Star-Bulletin. Contact her at http://www.susanscott.net.
